By Evan Falchuk

Another day, another round of disastrous town hall meetings for congressional representatives.

Why is it going so badly?

As I noted yesterday, angry resistance to change in health benefits is totally predictable.

The RAND Corporation and Watson Wyatt did a survey of 42 large U.S. employers that implemented major changes to their benefits plans in recent years.  They found that employees were normally “wary,” “confused,” “apprehensive” and “risk averse” about changes.  Employees assume – rightly or wrongly – that when management talks about “controlling costs,” it is just a nice way of saying, “we want to spend less money on you.“  No one likes to hear that.

So what does work?

Clear, direct, honest communication.  Companies that spent 6 months or more talking about their plans were far more successful than those that didn’t.  What worked were real, specific examples of what change means for an employee and their family.  How much will my take home pay be affected?  How much more will I have to pay for care?  Can I still pick my own doctors?

There was no replacement for concrete, simple, real illustrations done over and over again.

It’s very much the opposite of what’s happening in health care reform.

Sure, we have been talking about it for months, but mostly about the need to cut costs.  People think – I’ve heard this story before at my job.  What it means is that my health care is about to get cut.  So they get anxious.

But unlike a company trying to implement a benefits change, representatives returning to their districts have no plan to explain.  Instead, they have multiple bills, and no idea of what may become law.  They can’t give real, practical examples of what reform may mean, and don’t seem to be trying.  It’s a very bad combination given how delicate the question of health care is.

And it also makes the statements by some of our representatives all the more bizarre.  There’s nothing at all helpful about trying to dismiss skeptical citizens as swastika-carrying agents of the insurance lobby.

So think about the angry people at town halls like employees at a company who are being told that their jobs are being eliminated, or their benefits are being cut.  And think when you watch our representatives talking about this how they are missing real, honest reaction, and making it worse.